


You're So Weird

by chollarcho



Category: Starfighter (Comic)
Genre: crackfic
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2012-12-24
Updated: 2013-05-19
Packaged: 2017-11-22 06:36:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 13
Words: 15,058
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/606888
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/chollarcho/pseuds/chollarcho
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A collection of cracky Starfighter drabbles.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Candy Cane-Grams, Part 1

**Author's Note:**

> Candy Cane-Grams, Part 1
> 
> (Inspired by the movie "Mean Girls.")

Cain sat cross-legged on their bedding, sorting through a pile of candy canes. “Deimos…Deimos…Praxis…Deimos…Bering…”

“Wow, that’s a lot of candy canes. I just got a few anonymous ones,” Abel said, sitting opposite him.

“Mostly from Deimos. They’re not signed but I know his writing,” Cain muttered. “Still, a pretty good haul this year. Give me yours.”

Abel was appalled. “What? No, you have plenty of your own—”

“I said give me the damn candy canes. Want to see if I recognize the handwriting.”

Abel passed over his four candy canes reluctantly. Cain flipped open the little cards attached to each and frowned.

“Praxis,” he growled finally. “You got one from Praxis. Look, see, his l’s have a funny loop at the top.”

“I bet he sends them to everyone,” Abel hedged. “He sent you one, right?”

Cain curled his lip. “Just trying to throw me off. I’ll set him straight tomorrow.” He looked at the next candy cane. “Ugh. Deimos,” he said and tossed it towards the “Deimos” pile on reflex. Abel snatched it out of the air.

“Third one’s Keeler. I don’t know about the last,” Cain said, throwing them back to Abel. “Better keep your eyes open, baby. Probably from some fighter creep who’ll try to feel you up in the lift. You just let me know who and I’ll beat the shit out of him.”

“I’m sure that won’t be necessary,” Abel said, but he shivered anyway.

—

Meanwhile, six rooms down the hall, Bazin lay on his bunk and wondered if he should have signed his name on the card. He looked at his own anonymous candy cane and sighed. Maybe it was from Abel.

—

(It was actually from Deimos.)


	2. Candy Cane-Grams, Part 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Candy Cane-Grams, Part 2

Sitting still in the hubbub of the mess hall at breakfast, Deimos watched Bazin, in the midst of a group of navigators seated across the hall, lick a candy cane. At last, Bazin glanced up and their eyes met. Deimos winked very deliberately. Bazin blushed and dropped the candy cane. It stuck to the front of his uniform and made a pinkish smear as it slid slowly to his lap. Deimos licked his lips, and Bazin paled.

“Hey,” Cain greeted him, shoving Deimos aside on the bench and sitting heavily enough to shake the table. “Don’t send me so many fucking candy canes next year,” he groused. “It’s pathetic. You want everyone to think you’re a desperate loser? I mean, you are, but still. I’m not going to fuck you just because you sent me a hundred candy canes.”

Deimos simply snorted and directed Cain’s attention to Praxis, who had entered the hall and was striding towards their table.

“Cain,” Praxis said tersely, halting a few paces away.

“Looking for a fight, Cyclops?” Cain’s eager voice indicated that he hoped for an affirmative answer.

Praxis was bemused. “Uh, look, Cain. I only sent you that candy cane as a goodwill gesture. I—I appreciate the candy canes you sent, and I’m flattered that you think my nose is sexy, but I’m not interested in you. Sorry,” he added, and he did sound somewhat apologetic.

Flabbergasted, Cain stared at him with an open mouth. “What?” he managed after a moment of speechlessness. “What the _fuck_ are you going on about, shit-brain?”

Praxis made a sound of disgust. “I figured you wouldn’t handle rejection well,” he muttered, digging ten candy canes out of his pocket. These he dumped on the table in front of Cain, who looked at them in horror. “Here, you can have them back. Thanks but no thanks,” Praxis said, and turned on his heel.

Cain furiously snatched up several of the candy canes and read their little cards: _Dear Praxis, let bygones be bygones and let’s hook up some time. –Cain. Dear Praxis, your nose is so hot. Call me. –Cain. Dear Praxis, you’re such a dreamy hunk and I like you. Do you like me? –Cain._ On and on the candy cane-grams went, and Cain, blind with rage, leaped after Praxis, shouting, “Get back here, you spineless ass! You think this is funny?! I’m going to smash your teeth, and then you try laughing at me!”

A nasty fistfight followed, which ended only when several burly fighters managed to pry the combatants apart. Cain, sporting a spectacular set of black eyes, was thrown into his seat next to Deimos, while Praxis limped back to the breakfast line.

Still grinding his teeth and thrumming with aggressive energy, Cain picked up another candy cane-gram and spat on it. “That ugly shit, who does he think he is—” Cain curtailed his rant abruptly and squinted at the writing.

“Deimos!” Cain hurtled the candy cane to the ground, where it shattered. “You little shit, _you_ sent him the candy cane-grams!” Cain growled, and reached for his neck. The other fighters at the table held their breaths and watched in fear.

But then Cain enveloped Deimos in a firm embrace. “You set up the fight with Praxis! This is the best gift I could ever receive,” Cain declared. “Tell you what, meet me in my quarters tonight and we’ll have some fun.”

Deimos pressed closer to Cain. Over Cain’s shoulder, he caught Abel’s eye across the hall and winked as salaciously as he could manage.

Yes, they’d all have some fun.


	3. Spacebook

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Inspired by the-nerd-word and a text from the Sleipnir.

Cain was chillaxing, enjoying a smoke and the afterglow of some pretty hot sex, when he was rudely interrupted by Abel.

“Someone unfriended me!” Abel whined.

“Told you to quit checking Spacebook after sex,” Cain muttered. “You’re too emotional.”

“I had 893 friends, and now I only have 892,” Abel moaned. “Who was it? Who unfriended me? Who hates me so much? Why am I unlovable?”

“Baby, you’re not unlovable, if by unlovable you mean unfuckable,” Cain said helpfully.

Abel ignored him, frantically skimming the list of his Spacebook friends. “Oh my god, I can’t even think of who the missing friend might be. I should have unfriended them first, the ungrateful ass. I need to purge my friends.”

“Fuck, just shut up about it and let me smoke.” Cain fished another non-carcinogenic space-cigarette out of the pack and stuck the box back under his pillow, right next to the lube. “Throw me the lighter.”

“Not now, Cain, I’m busy.” Abel flicked further down his friends list.

Cain scowled. “You’re just like Deimos, always Spacebooking and unfriending people and cropping them out of photos. Waste of fucking time.”

Abel gasped dramatically. “Deimos! Oh my god—Deimos unfriended me!” He scrolled back up the list and confirmed his fear: “That nasty shit! He unfriended me! I can’t believe he did that. I knew I should have unfriended him ages ago. What if someone notices? I need to friend someone else, fast.”

Cain, meanwhile, had stuck his head under the pillow, glaring at the lube and the cigs and wishing Abel would shut the fuck up.

“Do you know who Bazin is? Whatever, I’ll friend him anyway. That’ll show Deimos, that sneaky rat.”

\--

Later, down the hall, Bazin checked his Spacebook account, and his heart fluttered a little. Abel had friended him! Now Bazin had a friend who wasn’t his fighter or his lieutenant or his parents. He pressed his hands to his blushing cheeks and tried to collect his thoughts so he could post something cool and really awesome on Abel’s Wall. Surely this was the beginning of something wonderful.


	4. Spacebook, Part 2

Bazin frowned as he checked his Spacebook account notifications.  He had posted an album of fifty nearly identical photos of outer space a few days ago, and his parents had dutifully Liked and commented on each photo.  Lieutenant Keeler had sent him a message, probably typed while drunk, though it was hard to tell with Keeler, asking him if he would join a group of navigators for a drink “at the slipner bar, whole bunch of us r goin, gonnna do sake bombz dude u need 2 get out more.”  Aramis had posted more chain letter spam to his Wall.

There was nothing from Abel, but Bazin figured that with 893 friends, it would take Abel a while to make posts on everyone’s pages.

He opened the tablet’s word processor.  Since the night before, he had been carefully drafting a post for Abel’s Wall, agonizing over each word.  Aramis had told him to just jot something down and post it, for heaven’s sake, because it was Spacebook and no one really gave a shit.  But Bazin wanted his first post on Abel’s Wall to be perfect—so that when Abel finally left that brute Cain for Bazin, they could look back tenderly on this first little message.

So far, Bazin had written, _Hi, Abel!  I saw a really funny cat video the other day.  The link is below.  See you at flight sim training!_

He mulled over the first exclamation point.  Did it make him seem too excitable and eager?  He changed it to a period, and then wondered about the second exclamation point too.  And should he have abbreviated simulation?  Was the “really” superfluous, since cat videos were generally funny?  Was “funny” too ordinary a word?  What would catch Abel’s attention?

He posed these questions to Aramis.

“Baz, seriously, it’s just a Wall post,” Aramis huffed, pushing himself up from where he had lounged on Bazin’s bunk.  “Don’t sweat it.  Still have half an hour of break left, so I’m heading to the mess.  Want some lunch?”

Bazin went with him, hoping that Abel would be eating lunch too.

\--

The most popular navigators all sat together in the mess hall, and Abel was their shining star.  His scintillating conversation, his animated personality, his golden hair, so soft-looking—was there anything about Abel that wasn’t beautifully captivating?  Bazin’s breath caught in his throat when he caught sight of Abel at his customary table.  There was an empty seat diagonal to Abel, and Bazin knew, he just _knew_ , that today was the day he would eat lunch with Abel for the first time.  Yesterday, they had been veritable strangers. Today, they were Spacebook friends.  Tomorrow...perhaps something more.

Bazin looked forward to a lifetime of eating lunch with Abel, and maybe even holding hands under the table.

He started to blush, so he summoned thoughts of Bering farting.  That did the trick, as usual, and he marched to Abel’s table, gripping his tray so tightly that his knuckles whitened.

“Hi, Abel,” Bazin chirped, hiding his nervousness with a bright smile.  Maybe too bright, because Abel looked at him oddly at first.  “Hi,” Abel replied after a moment, smiling in his pretty way.

“Hey, Baz, join us,” Ethos, seated across from Abel, greeted him.

Bazin took the empty seat next to Ethos and busied himself with eating, lest he be tempted to stare at Abel and start blushing again.

“Anyway,” Abel continued, speaking to Ethos, “I checked Spacebook and discovered he had unfriended me!  What a jerk, right?  I mean, for fuck’s sake, he wouldn’t be nearly so popular if I hadn’t deigned to friend him in the first place.”

“He’s probably just teasing you,” Ethos assured him.  “You know how flighty he is.”

“Yeah, well,” Abel started to say, but cut off with a strangled noise.  Bazin glanced up to see Deimos walking by their table on his way to the lunch line.  Deimos’ gaze slid smoothly past Abel, who turned white and glared at him with ferocious intensity, and he winked at Bazin.

“What the hell?” Abel snapped, turning to Bazin.  “Are you fucking him or something?”

“No!” Bazin was horrified at the very thought of being intimate with someone other than Abel.

Abel seemed gratified at his revulsion, smiling his pretty smile again.  “Yeah, he’s such a creep, right?”

“Y-yeah,” Bazin replied breathlessly.  Then his tablet beeped.  He glanced down and saw that he had a friend request...from Deimos.  “What’s up?” Ethos asked, leaning over to see.  “Whoa, Deimos friended you!  He’s very exclusive, you know.”

Bazin wasn’t sure how Deimos could be “exclusive” and have 1,629 friends scattered across the galaxy, but he felt honored nonetheless.  He glanced at Deimos, who was holding court at the popular fighters’ table.  Deimos looked up from his own tablet and blew Bazin a kiss.  Bazin turned bright red and felt so hot that he was certain his skin would be permanently damaged.

Abel watched the exchange with wild eyes, glaring back and forth between Bazin and Deimos.  Finally he slapped his hands on the table, growling, “Okay, who the fuck are you and why does Deimos want to be your Spacebook friend!?”

“Ooh, jealous,” Ethos said cattily, not looking up as he clicked through a photo album from a recent party on Keeler’s Spacebook page.  “Puck looks good in a miniskirt,” he said in surprise, but Abel and Bazin weren’t listening.

“I’m—w-what?” stammered Bazin.  His tablet beeped again and again; he glanced down to see that dozens of friend requests were filling his notification inbox, all from fighters who copied Deimos’ every move.

“ _Who are you?_ ” Abel snarled again.

“I-I’m Bazin,” he managed, extremely confused.  “We’re friends.”

He had hoped this verbal confirmation of their relationship would jog Abel’s memory, but Abel merely squinted at him.  “Huh,” he muttered.  “Are we Spacebook friends?”

Bazin stared at him, incredulous and hurt. Abel was already checking Spacebook on his tablet, though.  “Oh my god, we are!  I friended you yesterday.  Well, I friended you before Deimos did, so remember that.”  He looked Bazin up and down.  “You’re cute. Want to eat lunch with us, Baz?”

“I am,” said Bazin, lifting his sandwich.

“I mean every day.”

Bazin dropped the sandwich in shock.  “Great!  Yeah, I mean, that would be cool,” he said, hoping he sounded nonchalant.

Abel smiled at him sweetly.  “On Wednesdays we wear our Alliance-issue white tank-tops.”

“And you can’t wear your hair in a braid because that’s Keeler’s thing,” Ethos added.

The end.  Probably.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I think there’s a pattern developing in my crack-drabbles: scene with Cain and Abel in their room, followed by scene in the mess hall with Bazin and Deimos, insert references to Mean Girls everywhere, the end.


	5. Spacebook, Part 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Travel back in time to Abel and Cain's first evening together. Now, for the first time ever, the whole story of that hot, hot night will be told.

"Cain?"  
  
"Hmm?"  
  
"No biting next time!"  Abel frowned up at Cain, who smiled to himself lazily.  Abel wasn't sure if that meant Cain agreed, so he nudged him in the ribs until Cain squirmed.  
  
“Fuck, quit it, princess!  No biting, fine, whatever.”  
  
Satisfied, Abel listened to Cain’s heartbeat and breathing as he mulled over their encounter.  His mother had told him that sex would be more disappointing than he would expect, but Cain had been more exciting and pleasurable than he imagined.  He wondered about the best way to break this revelation to his mother.   _Dear Mom,  Turns out sex is really great.  Sorry Dad is so boring.  Love, Ethan._  
  
Of course, his mother would probably pester him yet again to friend her on Spacebook, in hopes of discovering the identity of his beau.  Ha!  As if he’d ever friend either of his parents--only the desperate losers with fewer than twenty friends did that.  Joining the Alliance had been the best decision of Abel’s life.  He had friended his entire cohort in basic, and was steadily adding new fighter and navigator friends each day on the station.  
  
Also, he had finally had the opportunity to have sex.  
  
That brought him back to Cain, his aggressive new fighter who would probably turn out to be a piece of shit, if that crap about the scar was any indication, but who also had well-defined abs.  
  
“Hey, are you on Spacebook?” he asked, expecting the answer yes, because who younger than middle-aged wasn’t?  
  
“No.”  
  
“I asked, are you on Spacebook?”  
  
“And I said no.  Go the fuck to sleep,” Cain mumbled.  
  
Abel’s jaw dropped (a little; his head was still pressed against Cain’s chest).  “I thought I misheard you.  How can you _not_ be on Spacebook?”  
  
“Fuck, shut up.”  
  
“I don’t understand.  You mean you don’t have a Spacebook account?  Or you just don’t check it often?”  Abel realized his mouth, still open with amazement, was drooling on Cain’s chest.  He pushed himself up to look down at Cain incredulously instead.  
  
“I _mean_ that only idiots waste their fucking time on Spacebook and I’m not an idiot.”  
  
“But I want to be Spacebook friends with you!  We can set up an account right now.  It’ll only take a minute--”  
  
“No!”  
  
“Here’s the new account form.  What’s your email--”  
  
“I said no!”  Cain pried the tablet from Abel’s hands, while Abel followed his movement and frantically tried to continue typing.  
  
“But I want to change my status to ‘in a relationship’--”  
  
Cain threw the tablet into the bathroom.  It bounced off the cabinet and crashed into the wall behind the toilet.  “Give it a fucking rest, I’m _not_ signing up for Spacebook!  Now shut up, or you’ll be sleeping in the fucking corridor!”  
  
Abel stared at him.   _That was your tablet_ , he mouthed.  
  
Cain grabbed Abel’s tablet and flung it into the bathroom too.  
  
\--  
  
Deimos lay on his stomach and waved his feet back and forth in the air, humming a little tune as he stared down at a program on his tablet.  Spacebook wasn’t very serious about protecting its users’ privacy, so surely hacking Spacebook wouldn’t be very difficult.  But so far, several firewalls had stymied his efforts.  
  
His new navigator turned onto his back and began to snore loudly.  
  
Deimos glanced at him.  Cute, but not very talented.  Always bringing his tall, quiet navigator friend back to the room so they could badmouth other navigators.  Still, cute and a good fuck.  
  
Deimos pinched his navigator’s nose.  When the snoring merely continued at a muffled volume, he shifted onto his side and kicked at the new Athos until he scooted down to the foot of the bed, still asleep.  The snoring paused.  
  
Deimos turned back to the innards of Spacebook.  If he could only get through a few more layers of security, he could find Cain’s account.  In basic training, Cain had had a high-profile Spacebook relationship with another recruit, Encke.  For more than two months, their publically-posted love notes, photo albums, clever and topical internet links, and other Spacebook paraphernalia had engrossed their hundreds of Spacebook friends.  But eventually their relationship had soured, and after their dramatic breakup, Cain had deactivated his account with the support of Deimos and a lot of vodka.  
  
“He’ll come crawling back, you’ll see,” Cain had told Deimos, before puking on Deimos’ newly-issued Alliance tablet.  
  
Later, Deimos realized that Cain didn’t remember deactivating, rather than deleting, his Spacebook account.  And now that Encke was gone, hopefully stationed in a solar system far, far away, Deimos could implement his most devious plan yet:  revive Cain’s account and change his and Deimos' relationship status to ‘engaged.’


	6. Spacebook, Part 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Spacebook, Part Four: The Torrid, Brief Romance of Cain and Encke
> 
> Warnings: drug usage, poor anger management, bad spelling and grammar, and inadvisably carefree usage of social media. And Deimos is a nasty shit. Don’t listen to anything he says.
> 
> Based on Before by asocialconstruct. Sorry for the inconsistent style in the beginning, middle, and end...this half-humor/half-serious beast did not want to be written.

_**Deimos** _

Deimos was a pretty popular guy on the _Sleipnir_.  He had an in with one of the maintenance staff, Vicks, who cooked up some crazy shit in the bowels of the ship with supplies pilfered from the kitchen and the infirmary (and a few ingredients of his own).

Thank goodness Vicks had transferred to the _Sleipnir_ to replace a tech who had fallen ill.  With the help of Vicks’ fairy dust, Deimos had friended forty percent of the _Sleipnir_ ’s crew on Spacebook within the first week on board.  He kept a spreadsheet on his tablet to monitor his progress versus Abel’s—and he was confident he would friend the entire ship before Abel did.

His most recent additions were Cassius and Puck, sergeants who worked directly under the lead fighter and navigator.  Deimos recognized how useful these two could be to him, so he put extra effort into making friends with them.  Well, he did Vicks some favors in arranging for certain contraband to be smuggled aboard the ship, and then Vicks put extra effort into a new concoction, just for Deimos.  This drug may have been entirely synthetic, but it was guaranteed to make genuine friends.

\--

Less than an hour with Vicks’ drug, a bag of banana chips, and some gossip, and Deimos had made friends with Cassius and Puck.

“No _way_ , Encke used to be on Spacebook?” Cassius asked, grabbing another handful of banana chips.  “That is _crazy_ , man, no _way_.”

“Way,” Deimos said.  “He had, like, a couple thousand friends.”

“Wow, I wish he’d get back on Spacebook and friend me.  I want a thousand friends,” Puck whined.  He noshed a few more chips, licked the crumbs from his hand, and started pawing through Deimos’ knapsack.  “Hey, is there anymore of that stuff?”

Deimos eyed Puck’s small frame and dazed expression.  “Another time.  You’ve had enough for tonight.”

“Oh, okay.  How come it’s purple?”

Cassius cut in, still incredulous, still sky-high, if his exaggeratedly expressive speech was an indicator:  “So _why_ did Encke have so many friends?  He doesn’t even _have_ a Spacebook account anymore.  Did he _ditch_ all those people?  That's _crazy_.”

“Ditched ’em all.”  Deimos nodded emphatically.  “In a fit of rage, he deactivated his account.”

“Wow,” whispered Puck.

“Why’d he do _that_?”  Cassius asked as quietly, because it seemed Deimos was about to reveal dark secrets.

“I’ll tell you,” Deimos said in a hushed voice.  “It all started years ago, when we were recruited and sent to basic...”

\--

_**Eight** _

Fifty’s nose was swollen, and his knuckles were split, and his mullet was ratty and damp with sweat and Twenty’s blood.  He was probably cute underneath the bruises and grime, but—just no, ew.  Eight gave him a tired, pitying look-over, hardly believing he’d dragged himself to the bathroom to save Fifty’s scruffy ass.  “Don’t fucking pick fights after lights-out.  Won’t always be someone to rescue you like you’re some damsel in distress,” he added with a snort.

Fifty scowled, wiped blood from his face and spat on the floor at Eight’s feet.  “You wanna fight, I’ll beat your ass so bad—"

Eight rolled his eyes and turned to leave, waving at Fifty dismissively.  “Just said I didn’t want to fight.  Not like you could win anyway, Fifty.”

“You’re Eight,” Fifty said as he reached the door.  “Saw your profile on Spacebook.”

Eight paused, looked back patiently.  “Yeah, so?”

“You got to Eight real fast.  You win like every fight you’re in—”

Eight pursed his lips.  He had better things to do than listen to Fifty dance around something so obvious.  “Spit it out, Fifty.”

“Teach me how to fight.”  Just as he expected.  Forty-Eight, Forty-Seven, and Forty-Five had all asked the same thing, and they’d all gotten the same response.

“Don’t have time to waste on your ass.  You’re on your own.”

But Fifty called him back.  “Friend me on Spacebook.  You can friend all my friends.  I already got like three hundred.”

Eight let out a short laugh.  “Where you hiding them, baby?  Sure got none here.”

Fifty scowled angrily at that, but it was quickly lost in his determined frown.  “Other basic camps.  Even some recruits with commissions.”

Eight looked at Fifty with curiosity now, wondering if it was true and doubting it.  Couldn’t hurt to find out, but— “What are you expecting from this?” he asked carefully.

Fifty took a deep breath.  “Six and Forty made a deal this morning.  They’re in a relationship on Spacebook, and Six is gonna help Forty in training, and everybody will see them.  All the officers will know them.”

Eight studied his expectant stare.  It was way too early to see whether Six and Forty’s strategy would work, but he had made the same assessment himself when the relationship popped up in his notification feed.

Fifty ran his fingers through his hair to flatten it.  “Well?  I got three hundred friends, and I’m a fast learner.”

Eight smiled, skeptical but a bit impressed by Fifty’s persistence.  Better than Forty-Nine, beaten bloody by mid-day and already scheduled for a transport back to the colonies at the end of the week.  Eight hadn’t participated in Forty-Nine’s humiliation, but he hadn’t done anything to stop it either, just let it happen because everyone knew how basic worked.

But basic could work another way, too.  “Okay.  I friend you, teach you for a week, and we’ll see how it goes from there.”  He looked Fifty up and down again, filthy and bloody, with that stupid mullet.  Decided Fifty might be pretty under the grime after all, and that it would be worth finding out.  “Clean the fuck up and go get some sleep.”

\--

_**Fifty** _

Eight:     _hey baby we’re gonna work on ur left hook tomorrow, its super shitty ok_

Fifty:      _yeah thx whatever 0600 hrs right_

Eight:     _yup_

Eight did as promised, friended him the next morning and started working with him on his nonexistent technique.  Eight didn’t seem so stern on Spacebook, with his quick, careless typing, and Fifty grew bolder, clicking back through Eight’s timeline to see who talked to him about what.  Eight had four hundred friends, and the number ticked up quickly after he started friending Fifty’s friends.  But there were just a few who regularly posted on Eight’s profile, several of the top ten and top twenty in their cohort, a few others from other basic groups.  Much of the conversation was masculine posturing, discussing fights and exploits in terms vague enough to escape the notice of superior officers.

Fifty clicked away from the testosterone-fest that was Eight’s timeline and looked through his photo albums.  There were some of his childhood friends, children with big grins and mischievous eyes, a few more of the colonial town where he lived.  The rest were all Eight’s own photography, very hip photos with filters carefully applied to amplify the mood or setting, nostalgic, rustic, inner city, romantic...organic.

Fifty frowned thoughtfully down at the self portrait of Eight sitting on the steps to a narrow, urban building.  A cat sat next to him, and they looked at each other pensively, meanwhile showing off Eight’s nice jawline, and were those biceps under that t-shirt there?  Yes, they were.

Yeah, Fifty wouldn’t mind tapping that.  And now that he knew Eight’s hobby, he’d be sure to find a way to do just that.

\--

Fifty had Eight meet him in the barracks by his bunk.  "Hey," Fifty said nonchalantly when Eight approached, as he slowly put away the camera he had borrowed from Forty-Three.

"You ready to work on your left hook again?  Your right one too, they're both shitty as fuck."  But Eight's eyes were on the camera.

Fifty tossed his hair out of his eyes and smiled.  "Yeah, just putting this away.  I got such a great photo of the dusty windows, couldn't pass up the chance with this lighting."

"Yeah?"  Eight said after a moment.  "You a photographer?"

"Just an amateur.  Used to use Spacegram to apply cool filters and stuff but now they charge for it so I'm trying to develop my skills independently."  Fifty sat on the bunk, and Eight didn't tell him to get the fuck up, so he kept going.  "What about you?  You ever use Spacegram?"

Eight sat slowly, like he wasn't sure if Fifty was setting him up for a trick.  "A couple times.  Got my own photo editing program I prefer."

"You a photographer too?" Fifty asked, pretending surprise.

Eight snorted.  "If you saw my Spacebook profile like you claimed, then you'd know."

"Didn't know you took all those photos," Fifty said quickly.  "They're good.  Really editorial," he added, not sure quite what that meant, but he'd heard the word thrown around on the television show _Project Spaceway_ and he was pretty sure it was a good thing.

"Thanks," Eight said, turning a little red.  "Maybe we can talk photography sometime."

"I'd like that," Fifty said in a sultry tone, and he spread his thighs a little.

Eight stared at his crotch.  "Okay, then," he breathed, dazed.  "Let's work on that left hook, baby."

"Yes, let's," Cain said in his ear, flicking out his tongue for just an instant.

\--

They really did get around to training, and Fifty was as pleased with his progress there as he was with his progress in bed—and in the showers, storage closets, kitchen pantries, and behind the obstacle course.

Eight:     _hey babe heard u got 44 in the nuts with ur left hook.  good job, im so proud of u_

Fifty:     _thx i tried really hard_

Eight:    _im kinda hard too, u wanna meet me in the showers after obstacles, that’d be nice ;)_

Fifty:    _yeah, that’d be cool_

Eight:     _k see u then_

Fifty:     _k_

Fifty began to rise through the ranks, leaving a trail of bloody but smitten recruits in his wake, and he and Eight began to gather more Spacebook friends across dozens of training camps, all eager to bear witness to their power-couple romance.

Eight:     _hey baby u had good form when u sent 42 to the hospital today_

Fifty:    _thx that means a lot to me_

Eight:     _u looked so gorgeous esp when u elbowed him in the eye. i love ur biceps_

Fifty:       _fuck off, im blushing_

Eight:    _love it when u talk dirty sweetheart_

Fifty:     _fuck you, quit makin me blush_

Eight:    _locker rm now_

Fifty:     _already there_

Forty:    _omg you two are the CUTEST, i cant even, what is this feeling in my body_

Fifty:     _lol thats the kidney i kicked sorry about that man_

\--

_**Thirty** _

Thirty had watched Eight and Fifty’s Spacebook relationship from the beginning, just in case something came of it.  Fifty was unpredictable, falling so far on the first day of basic, but rising just as quickly with Eight backing him and training him and _getting into a fucking Spacebook relationship with him_.

Thirty hated it.  Before the fourth day of basic was out, Eight and Fifty had already changed their relationship status to _It’s Complicated_.  It wasn’t, of course, they were just so fucking trendy they couldn’t choose a more conventional and realistic label.  They fucked, they trained, they discussed photography, and they recorded it all publicly on Spacebook, where every comment thread or photo could mock Thirty.  Fifty was all over Eight, and he hadn't even _noticed_ Thirty.

It got worse when Eight put in for shore leave on a long, holiday weekend and took Fifty along; they didn’t update their Spacebook accounts for the whole trip, didn’t even check in anywhere because Eight had recently proclaimed that “checking in is for losers who need everybody to know everything they do.”  Which, of course, wasn’t quite true:  Spacebook was for showcasing the best of life.  Losers who wanted to share everything used Chirper.  Only navigators were lame enough to use Chirper and tell everyone in the universe when they brushed their teeth or what they ate for lunch and where.

(Thirty might have used Chirper a few times, but only to tell the navigators what losers they were, so that was okay.)

For a few days, things were quiet on the Spacebooksphere, with little conversations here and there anticipating the return of Eight and Fifty and their magical coupleness.

And then they were back, with almost three hundred photos between them and way too much information about how much fun they’d had and how awesome their relationship was, just _so, so awesome_.  Thirty wanted to punch something and then proposition Fifty, but instead he started clicking through the massive albums.

There were a lot of artsy scenery shots by Eight—photos of rustic buildings, a tidy row flowerpots on a windowsill with peeling paint, a bench outside a semi-rural post office, an old wrought-iron bicycle stand with three red bicycles lined up.  Fifty’s photos, taken with less skill, had a healthy share of tree lines at odd angles, close-ups of odd objects such as paper cups on hotel nightstands, and every.  Single.  Fucking.  Meal he ate.

There were also a lot of self-portraits:  Eight’s arm, holding the camera, was visible in most.  Fifty managed to look pissed off and pleased, in his stupid smug way, in most as well.  There were definitely a few post-coital shots, Fifty staring lethargically in the camera’s direction, or, more likely, at Eight behind the camera.

All told, there were way too many photos of Eight and Fifty lounging together everywhere, in bed, in chairs, in the car, _on_ the car, on fences, on benches, on boulders by waterfalls.  Way too many of Eight kissing Fifty’s cheek while Fifty blushed and leaned into him.

Thirty looked at them all.  Twice.  Then he saved a dozen or so of the best on his tablet and began the laborious process of cropping out as much of Eight as he could.

\--

_**Eight** _

Fifty had been right.  Their real-life interactions and Spacebook relationship (which Fifty referred to a power-couple relationship, indicating that he probably should stop reading grocery store celebrity magazines) had garnered significant attention in recent Alliance recruits and their drill sergeants.  Even a few officers had started to notice.  Eight and Fifty had each received a friend request from One right before shore leave, and after, One had commented positively on several of their photos.   _Very nice photograph.  Your camera aim is as good as your artillery aim.  Good work, Eight,_ read one of the comments.  Eight was certain that promotions were in his future after he saw the comment.

He looked through his notifications again and found the most popular photos had hundreds of Likes and comments already.  One in particular, which should have been a really hot photo of Fifty’s face in bed, was mostly ass.  Eight hadn’t wanted to upload it—it and the other photographs in bed were far too personal for Spacebook.  But Fifty had insisted, so Eight let him upload them to his own album.

Looking at Fifty’s cute ass, though, Eight couldn’t stay angry for long.  He scrolled to the end of the comments and added his own:

Eight:     _b_ _aby that was not the pic i intended to take lol. But u sure have a fine ass_

Fifty replied a few minutes later—probably shirking KP:

Fifty:      _thx_

Eight:     _i'd tap that lol_

Fifty:      _u already do dork :)_

Fifty wasn’t the sharpest recruit.  He put too much information on Spacebook, even while Eight was rethinking and locking down posts related to their romantic and sexual relationship.  People could still see they were a couple (fine, a power-couple), but they didn’t need to know that Fifty liked doing it on top of cars, or that they’d done it on top of a car in public.

Fifty would come around, though, with Eight to guide him.  That was what this relationship was about, anyway—Eight helping Fifty to refine himself in every way.

\--

_**Thirty** _

One day after PT, Eight pulled Fifty aside, spoke lowly in his ear while the other recruits filed out of the showers.  Thirty slowed, tried to find excuses to hang around.  He straightened his locker, fiddled with his bootlaces, and finally had to leave because Eight was glaring at him.

For the half-hour of free time before dinner, Thirty loitered outside the mess, wondering what Eight and Fifty were doing and why Fifty didn’t want to do it with Thirty instead.  But as recruits trickled towards the mess, he gave up and went inside.  Five weeks of training remained; plenty of time to meet Fifty.

The mess went quiet as Eight and Fifty entered, not a minute late, and then recruits all around the hall gasped in unison.  Fifty looked like a rock star, his mullet carefully trimmed and styled.  “Baby, you should get extensions or something,” Eight said loudly, as they joined the food line.  “You’d look so hot with some red streaks.  What do you think?”

“Fuck yeah, I’ll do it!  Maybe blue, that’s my favorite color,” Fifty said, tossing his head and grinning.

Thirty stared at him in disbelief, not noticing when the line moved past him and suddenly he was left at the end.  The mullet was gone, Fifty was downright sexy, and now Fifty knew it.  Thirty had to make his move, or he’d never have a chance with Fifty.

\--

_**Fifty** _

They’d had their first fight.  More and more, Eight had lectured him about not posting every little detail of their lives to Spacebook, and Fifty was fucking sick of it.  Basic training was only twelve weeks long, so it wasn’t like the universe knew about their lives from the moment of birth.  No one knew about Fifty’s sister, or his asshole father, or anyone else in his family.  He still didn’t know fuck-all about Eight, other than that he was good at fighting, good at photography, and good at fucking.

Fifty scrolled through his profile, filled with posts and comments and Likes and photos and crap from Eight, when Eight was the last person he wanted to see anywhere.  But they were in a Spacebook relationship, so he was everywhere.  Fifty turned off his tablet and kicked it to the foot of his bunk, disgusted with himself.

Eight had told him, over and over, to stop posting certain photos he wanted to keep private, or to at least set stricter privacy settings.  They could have their little romance, apparently, but Eight didn’t want anyone to know about it.  All Fifty wanted to do was tell _everyone_ about it, about his first boyfriend, who was hip and had a nice camera and a good career ahead of him.  And who was really great in bed.  For the first time in his life, Fifty had something to show off, and what was wrong with that?

Fifty said as much, and Eight yelled at him.  Said they were showing off enough without showing their asses to the world and the colonies and the space stations.  Said officers were taking notice of him—of Fifty too, Eight corrected himself, too quickly for Fifty’s liking—and they had to be more careful now, project a good image.  Said Spacebook was just a tool, part of their deal.

A tool, rather than the place where Fifty had started to like Eight, _really_ like him.

Someone came to stand beside his bunk, startling him from his reverie and low mood.  “What?” he snapped, because feeling angry was better than feeling sad.

One of the lower numbers, Thirty or so, looked at him sympathetically.  “I heard you fought.”  Didn’t even need to say who, and just like that Fifty was sad again.

“So fucking what,” Fifty mumbled.

“I’m Thirty,” he said, voice very quiet and raspy.  “Misha,” he added.

Fifty glanced up at him again, realized he didn’t even know Eight’s real name.  They weren’t supposed to share their civilian information.  Not that Eight would willingly share anything with him anyway.

“Twenty-Eight,” Fifty replied.  “Sacha.”

After that, Thirty began following him, sitting near him and smelling a little like home.  They spoke in Russian—few of the other recruits were from Colony Five and knew the language.  Fifty decided it _was_ nice to have something of himself that was private...from Eight.

\--

_**Eight** _

After the first fight, the second, third, fourth, and countless more came effortlessly.  Fifty was gorgeous and a good fighter, but stupid as shit.  He didn’t get it, or he didn’t care—that their deal had been to promote themselves on Spacebook, not broadcast to the whole fucking universe that Eight had shrieked when Fifty stuck a finger in him.

Eight had wiped that post (“ _hey 8 sorry about last nite didnt know u had never had a finger up where the sun dont shine, but fuuuck wish u hadnt screamed in my ear, its still ringin_ ”) as soon as he’d seen it, but the hundreds and hundreds of friends he and Fifty had ensured that there were dozens of comments—and even a large number of Likes, which confused Eight—within minutes of the posting.

He gave Fifty the cold shoulder for three days after, until Fifty’s sulking wore him down.

He told himself it would get better.  Fifty was younger than him, young and stupid and didn’t understand how his actions on Spacebook now could affect his aspirations later.  Many an afternoon Fifty had spent, while they ran laps, telling Eight how he was going to make officer, save everyone from the Colterons, be a big hero.  Eight spent just as much time explaining how some stupid Spacebook post that seemed funny now could be found by Fifty’s future commanders and used in the decision _not_ to promote him to officer.

Eight got more and more pissed off with Fifty’s Spacebook antics, his inappropriate photos and postings, and became more and more concerned with how _he_ would look.  What would his own commanders think when they looked him up on Spacebook?  What if they thought he wasn’t capable—of making good decisions (like dumping Fifty, which was sounding more attractive every day), or of managing people (like bringing Fifty into line, which was absolutely impossible at this point).

And so they fought, over and over, and it didn’t get better, and Eight began to understand that it wouldn’t end well.

\--

_**Fifty** _

He almost told Eight to leave him alone that morning, just a week before the end of basic and so much shit going on, trying to pull as far ahead in the rankings as possible.  But as stressed as Fifty was, and as he knew Eight was, a fight didn’t sound like the worst idea.  Besides, the makeup sex would be a nice respite afterwards.

So he let Eight drag him to the empty mess hall during the break between the first and second PT sessions.  Eight’s scowl was something terrible, scaring Fifty a little but also stoking his anger.  He lifted his chin defiantly and glared when Eight pushed him into the wall just inside the mess.

"This is our break, the fuck are you—”

"Shut your fucking mouth."  Eight had his tablet out, tapping away at it, and then he was holding it up for Fifty to see.  He stabbed a finger at the post on Fifty's page.  “What the fuck is _this_?”

_HEY ALLIANCE WUTS UP. UR BORSCHT IS CRAP. U WANNA MAKE GOOD BORSCHT WELL GOOD THING IM HERE TO SHOW U HOW, 1ST U CHOP UP A FUCKTON OF BEETS N CARROTS, ONIONS, CABBBBBAGE COOK IT THEN U PUT IT ALL IN STOCK LIKE VEGABLE OR BEEEF WHATEVER IDK. THEN PEPPER SOUR CREAM OK THATS IT, ITS SO EASY UR ALL JUST REALLY FUCKIN BAD COOKS WUT IS WRONG W/ U. FUCK. WHO THE FUCK PROMOTS ALL U INCOMPETEMT IDIOTS TO OFFICER._

Fifty shrugged a shoulder disdainfully.  “Just a little advice I drunk-posted.  Why, you got a problem with it?” he said dangerously.

“Yeah, I do!” Eight crowded him back against the wall, shoving the tablet in his face.  “Fucking delete it, Fifty, you’re always fucking shit up, and you _know_ I'm always associated with you!”

“Cry me a fucking river,” Fifty snarled, batting away Eight’s hands and the tablet.  “I’m not gonna take it down, 'cause I stand by every word of it.  And it got two thousand comments, how ’bout that?  Looks like everyone fucking agrees with me that their borscht sucks--”

Eight slammed his fist into the wall by Fifty’s head.  Fifty barely flinched, his lips curling contemptuously.  Eight grew angrier, and Fifty's snarling smile widened.  “Who gives a shit about the borscht?" Eight growled.  "It’s just _food_ , for fuck’s sake—we’re soldiers, not restaurant critics!”

“ _I_ give a shit when they insist on feeding me crap! I’m still growing, Eight, or don't you care!?”

“That's a fucking pathetic excuse.  You’ll always be scrawny and whiny,” Eight said nastily, “and you’ll never amount to anything.  You wanna grouse about the rations and officers and fuck knows what else, fine!  But you’re not dragging me down too.  I’m gonna fucking unfriend you.”

Fifty didn't know that was the worst thing Eight could say until he said it, and Fifty's gut tightened like he'd been punched, his heart pounding so loudly he couldn't hear anything else.  He ripped the tablet from Eight's grasp and flung it to the floor with a howl.  "Fuck you!"  The screen cracked and the back detached, skittering across the floor.  “Fuck you!” Fifty screamed again.  “Get outta my _face_ , get _lost_ , I don’t wanna see your face or your fucking Spacebook profile _ever again!_ "

Eight stomped on the tablet so hard it cracked clean in two.  “I’m _done_ with your shit!” he shouted.  “You and your goddamn Spacebook drama can go to hell, and you can be a big fucking Spacebook whore alone!”

They paused, their echoes fading, the mess hall quiet around them.  “What did you call me?” asked Fifty finally, hoarse.

“Didn’t call you anything you aren’t,” Eight said sharply, but he was red and wouldn't look at Fifty.

“A _Spacebook whore?_  So, what, you jealous of my fucking friends list?  Or that my photos sometimes get more Likes than yours?”  Fifty licked his lips, breathing hard, looking for something he could _really_ get angry about and start a fistfight.  “Or you think I’m some kind of slut?  Been sleeping around?”

Eight sneered, still staring at the wall.  “Does it matter?”

“Fuck you, Eight—”

“Not getting into another shouting contest with you, Fifty.  Listen up, ’cause I’m only telling you once more.”  Eight leaned in close and spoke lowly in Fifty’s ear.  “You wanna post shit about our fucking jobs on Spacebook?  Then you’re not gonna make officer.  They won’t promote you to _anything_ , because they won’t trust you to _keep your fucking mouth shut_.”  Fifty shivered at Eight’s breath against his neck and ear, opened his mouth to protest, but Eight cut him off:  “Keep your fucking mouth shut.  Do what you want, but I’m done with Spacebook, and I’m done with _you_.”

He left, stepping over the broken pieces of his tablet, and didn’t look back.  Fifty stared at the floor and didn’t watch him go.

\--

_**Thirty** _

When Thirty found Fifty's hiding place in the supply closet, his Spacebook message was already hours old.

_30 i need ur help, 8 broke up w me_

Fifty was sitting in the corner, in the empty space under the tall industrial shelving, with his knees pulled up, scrubbing his hands over his face, tears and snot everywhere.  Thirty didn’t understand—it had been half a day since they broke up, so why was Fifty still crying about it?  But he knew better than to say anything, knew enough about Fifty to know that he didn’t want opinions, didn’t want input or advice, just wanted someone there with him.  So Thirty set down a flask of vodka on the floor and sat beside him, tucked himself into the corner too and let Fifty do his crying.

“Misha, you gotta help me,” Fifty whispered after they’d been sitting there a while.  His voice was as raspy as Thirty’s and thick-sounding from his tears, and his hand shook when he picked up the flask to smell its contents.

Thirty studied his face, puffy and red around the eyes from crying, cheeks swollen with tear-tracks.  Not nearly as attractive as all those Spacebook photos Thirty had saved to his tablet.  “How?” he asked, ready to offer a washcloth and soap if Fifty wanted to clean up.

“I need to get rid of everything.  Gotta unLike, untag everything, every photo, video, post, comment, it’s all gotta go.”  Fifty pulled his tablet from his jacket.  “It’ll take forever.  I need your help.”

“You can’t just delete your profile?” Thirty wondered.

“Won’t clear me from everything I got tagged in.  Dunno if it works for comments and Likes,” Fifty mumbled.  He signed into his account, then bent his head to his knees again.

“You okay?” whispered Thirty.

Fifty shrugged.  He straightened after a moment, took a drink from the flask, wiped his eyes and his lips with the back of his hand.  “Get out your tablet.  I’ll give you the login info.”

Thirty did as he was told, and they sat together for a long while, well past lights-out, drinking and erasing every trace of Fifty from Spacebook.  At one point, Eight’s account disappeared, and Fifty looked so miserable that Thirty felt he had to say something.

“You’re doing the right thing.”  No ‘I think’ or any other subjective qualifiers.  Just a fact, because it was true.  Fifty was better off without a Spacebook romance with Eight.  He was better off without Eight at all.

Fifty seemed to like being told that, at least, even if he probably didn’t think it through as far as Thirty did.  “Yeah, I know,” he said gruffly, blinking tears back again.  He looked at Thirty and punched him in the arm.  “You’re okay.”

Thirty winced, but managed a weak smile, because that was Fifty’s way of saying “thanks” and “I’m glad you’re my friend.”  An elbow to the kidneys and a headlock was probably his way of saying “I love you,” but Thirty decided it was worth it when Fifty leaned against him a little.

\--

By the middle of the night, Fifty was smashed, half asleep and leaning so heavily against Thirty that Thirty was squished into the wall.

“You awake?  Think I got everything,” Thirty said quietly.  His left arm and both of his legs were numb and tingly, and they really needed to get back to their bunks before morning.

Fifty blinked up at him dully, eyes swimming.  “Oh, good…”

“Ready to delete your account?”

Fifty took Thirty’s tablet, his own asleep.  He stared at the screen, held his wavering hand over the ‘delete’ option, and then touched ‘deactivate.’  Thirty watched him click through the confirmations until the account was fully deactivated.  Fifty was off Spacebook.

"That's it.  Let's get some water and go to bed," Thirty said, very matter-of-fact, and it worked.  Fifty dropped the tablet to the floor, pushed himself up and braced himself against the shelves with a hand, and then abruptly vomited on Deimos' tablet.

Deimos stared down at the mess.  Good thing they were stopping by the bathrooms.

\--

Thirty had expected to be caught and given KP for the remainder of basic, but found the barracks in a Spacebook uproar over the results of the annual Alliance Idol singing contest.  Everyone was Spacebooking frantically, the quiet punctuated by the occasional real-life argument.  Thirty guided Fifty to his bunk without incident, and all his efforts that night were rewarded when Fifty clumsily tried to pat him on the back and got his ass instead.

\--

They were shipped out in the top ten and stationed far away from Eight.  Fifty was morose for weeks, and Thirty even began to fear that he would grow a mullet again.  But time passed, pretty navigators came along, and Fifty was finally more like Thirty wanted him to be--tough, confident, overly sexual, with a nice hairstyle, and _not_ with Eight.

"He never deactivated his account, then?" Cassius wondered.  Puck was fast asleep, curled up and drooling on the floor.

"No.  He's been Spacebook-free for four years and counting."

"That's kind of inspiring, but I can't really figure out why."  Cassius squinted into the bag of banana chips.  "Puck ate _all_ of them?  Damn.  So, now that Encke and Cain are on the same ship, you think they'll hook back up on Spacebook?"

Deimos shrugged.  "Doubt it.  Think Encke's got enough on his hands, trying to keep Keeler's Spacebooking from getting inappropriate."

"Good point."  Cassius stretched his arms and started hauling Puck up.  "That was fun.  Thanks, Deimos."

Deimos demurred, "It was nothing.  We'll have to do it again sometime."

"Give Puck a few months to recover.  See you at PT."

Deimos watched them go, then pulled out his tablet to review his friends spreadsheet.  Ha, he’d done it, he’d pulled ahead of Abel with Cassius and Puck in his friends list.  Humming a merry tune, he returned to his room, ready for another evening of trying to hack into Cain’s deactivated account.


	7. Trust Fund

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The excellent investment jokes (“If you’re worried” through “measure your net worth first”) are here courtesy of WTCelesta, who knows what she's talking about. I hope all of you are hereafter unable to look at your bank accounts without thinking about Cain and Deimos having sex.
> 
> All non-canon names borrowed from other fics. This story is a cracktastic AU in a college setting, based on a Text from the Sleipnir. As usual, it is ASocialConstruct's fault. http://textsfromthesleipnir.tumblr.com/image/41391567062
> 
> Sacha = Cain  
> James = Encke  
> Simon = Keeler  
> Ethan = Abel  
> Ivan = Praxis  
> Aleks Ruzinsky = Deimos  
> Louis = RBG, Bazin

Not a bad start to the night, but now Sacha felt bored.  He congratulated himself on being a good friend--standing in the dance club with James, making out and offering his ass for groping so that James’ on-again, off-again (currently off) boyfriend would get jealous and want James back.  
  
Such a good friend, but done with good deeds.  He studied the crowd of university students, picked a hot blond, and squirmed out of James’ arms.  “Sorry,” he said.  “Time’s up.  I got somewhere to be.”  
  
“But I don’t think Simon saw yet!” James complained.  
  
“Too bad.  Try again with someone else.”  Sacha let James have one more kiss, deep and obscene, and then he shoved his way onto the dance floor in search of his target.  A moment later he heard Simon shriek, “You cheating bastard!” and start a melodramatic argument with James.  “Guess he saw after all,” Sacha noted cheerfully, as he elbowed aside a dancing couple.  
  
The blond man was dancing with someone else when Sacha found him, but that didn’t last long.  Sacha slapped the other guy’s hands away from that sexy waist and pushed him into a group of gyrating dancers.  The would-be rival didn’t resurface.  
  
Sacha grinned.  “How about a dance, sweetheart?”  
  
The blond looked him up and down with his own little smile, paying extra attention to Sacha’s crotch, so Sacha pulled him close.  “I take that as a ‘yes.’”  
  
\--  
  
“Fuck, ahh,” Sacha groaned as he came.  The hot blond guy (Evan or Ethan; the music on the dance floor had been too loud to hear) swallowed around him until he stopped shaking, then leaned back to grin up at him.  
  
“Come on, baby,” Sacha panted, helping Evan or Ethan to stand and undoing his jeans quickly.  Evan or Ethan leaned against the restroom stall door, holding Sacha against him and jerking into the rough motions of Sacha’s hand.  
  
After Evan or Ethan came, Sacha cleaned him up before removing the condom from his own cock.  Such a gentleman, always.  “That was fun, baby.”  
  
“Yeah, we should see each other again,” Evan or Ethan said, and his tone promised that Sacha would see all of him.  
  
“Yeah,” Sacha agreed, letting them out of the stall.  
  
“See you out on the floor.”  Evan or Ethan pecked his cheek, checked out his ass, and left Sacha to wash his hands.  
  
Not bad for the first hour of the party.  
  
\--  
  
Sacha ran into James and Simon in an intimate corner by the restroom.  “You two kissed and made up,” he said in surprise.  Simon usually held out for at least half a day (or night) until agreeing to get back together.  
  
“My sugarplum is just the _sweetest_ ,” Simon simpered, pressing wet little kisses to James’ face.  He rounded on Sacha, suddenly mean and vengeful.  “Keep your hands off him, you little shit, or I’ll post the rest of the photos from that party in November on Spacebook.”  
  
Sacha squinted at him with a sneer.  “What party?”  
  
“Baby, Sacha was _way_ too drunk to remember that night,” James pointed out.  
  
“Whatever, I’ve got to find some blond guy named Evan or something,” Sacha said with a shrug.  He ignored Simon’s snarky comments about Sacha trying to make out with an artificial houseplant, and surveyed the crowd.  
  
Evan or Ethan was dancing with a brunet.  “Fuck, not again,” Sacha growled, and cracked his knuckles.  “Excuse me, I need to teach that interloper a lesson.”  The interloper had a nice ass, so Sacha resolved to spank that part of him.  
  
“Sacha, wait,” James blurted quickly, pulling Sacha back into the alcove.  “That’s the Ruzinsky kid.  You know, from the family who built half the town?”  
  
“Like the Ruzinsky Auditorium?  And Ruzinsky Hospital?”  
  
“Yeah.  He’s got a trust fund bigger than Monaco’s GDP, and his uncle is police commissioner.  Don’t do anything stupid.”  
  
Sacha eyed that ass again.  “What’s this about a trust fund?”  
  
But James’ mouth was full of Simon’s tongue, so Sacha decided to text his sensible friend Ivan.  He’d know what to do.  
  
 _i have 2 choose btwn a hot blond w/ no apparent gag reflex & a brunet w/ a great ass & a trust fund.  which would u choose?_ he texted.  
  
 _no gag reflex_ , Ivan replied a minute later.  
  
Sachs rolled his eyes.  Of course.  Ivan had an enormous dick and often had trouble finding a place to put it.  
  
 _ok_ , he wrote,   _i’ll go with the other one_ , because he preferred to be contrary.  
  
With that, he pocketed his phone and plowed through the dancers to Evan or Ethan and the Ruzinsky guy with the trust fund.  Evan or Ethan noticed his approach and winked sassily, beckoning him closer with a flutter of fingers.  “Hey, Sacha--what the hell?”  Evan or Ethan snapped when Sacha shouldered him out of the way and started dancing with the brunet.  
  
“Thought we were gonna dance and then...you know,” Evan or Ethan said loudly, trying to pull Sacha around to face him.  
  
“Not interested, so don’t hold your breath.  Maybe another night,” Sacha replied flippantly, waving him off.  
  
Evan or Ethan glared at both of them.  “Well, fuck you, too,” he snarled, and took his smooth, no-gag throat somewhere else.  
  
Belatedly remembering his manners, Sacha called after him, “Thanks, sweetheart.  Had fun,” but Evan or Ethan didn’t look back.  
  
Sacha flashed a megawatt smile at the brunet with the blue eyes and that hot, hot ass and all those high-yield investments.  “So,” Sacha said, tugging his new partner close to dance. “Have you reached the age of majority?”  
  
The brunet smiled saucily and turned around, the better to rub his fine derrière against Sacha’s crotch in time to the music.  
  
“Baby, you have the best quality caboose I’ve seen in a year,” Sacha declared, swaying his hips with the brunet’s.  “Got a name to go with these assets?”  
  
The brunet replied.  Probably Aleks or Alen, but the music was still too loud.  
  
“I’m Sacha.  How about those mutual funds, hm?  Standard and whatever?”  
  
Aleks or Alen felt Sacha’s rear in return.  “Mmm, I’d _love_ to have some mutual fun with you, standing or in any other position.  Wanna go somewhere?  Do something?”  
  
Sacha groped Aleks or Alen’s ass a little more.  “Yeah, I can think of something to do,” he said.  “So, do you invest in index funds, or do you go for specific stocks like Google--”  
  
“Yeah, let’s see what your index finger can do!” Aleks or Alen said eagerly, taking Sacha’s hands.  “But I’m not into smelling socks or any foot fetish stuff.”  
  
As Aleks or Alen led him through the press of dancing students to the restroom, Sacha felt his phone buzz.  He pulled it out of his pocket and found a text from Ivan.   _just got here, dibs on the hot blond._  
  
 _have fun_ , Sacha wrote back, and then Aleks or Alen shut the stall door behind them and tucked the phone back in Sacha’s jeans.  
  
\--  
  
The restroom was quiet, perfect for a quick fuck and some financial advice, and maybe even Aleks or Alen agreeing to spend a bit of his dough (surely it wasn’t _all_ tied up in a trust) on Sacha.  He pushed Aleks or Alen to face the stall door, tugging on the waistband of his designer jeans, but Aleks or Alen resisted, reaching back to kiss Sacha messily again.  
  
Kissing was nice, but Sacha had even nicer things in mind.  “Come on, Alen,” he coaxed, maneuvering him around.    
  
“ _Aleks._  It’s Aleks.”  
  
“Aleks,” Sacha repeated, grinding against him.  “If you’re worried about my excessive high-gearing or that the investment is more than you can handle, we can always start with splitting your shares.”  Aleks glanced at him doubtfully, so he hastily added, “I promise they won’t fluctuate.  You can go flat on Libor, and I’ll time my deposits.”  
  
Aleks smiled.  “I think I ought to measure your net worth first,” he replied in a sultry tone.  
  
“Sounds good to me,” Sacha agreed.  And a good thing it was indeed, because Sacha had run out of investment innuendos, other than at that moment--with Aleks rolling a condom onto him, kissing him, hot and hard against him--he wanted nothing more than to allocate all his funds to an aggressive investment in Aleks’ ass.  
  
\--  
  
Not bad at all for two hours into the party.  This night was shaping up to be the best Sacha had had in ages.  He and Aleks had returned to the dance floor after their restroom tryst, so Sacha was trying to impress his trust fund baby with his best dance moves.  Maybe they could ditch this student-filled dance club and go to the more expensive establishment down the street.  He still hadn’t learned anything about the size of Aleks’ trust or at what age it would pass from trustees to Aleks.  Sacha, though, was never one to abandon a challenge.  
  
So he turned Aleks around to dance with his back to Sacha’ chest, and with one hand he checked Wikipedia on his phone for Monaco’s nominal GDP.  Five and a half billion dollars?  He frowned, skeptical that Aleks’ trust could be in that range, no matter how long it had been accruing interest.  
  
“Hey, baby,” he said huskily in Aleks’ ear.  “Say you compared your net worth to the GDP of a small principality.  How big--”  
  
“Hi, Aleks!”  
  
Sacha looked up.  Another intruder--but, wait, he recognized this guy.  
  
“There you are,” Aleks said happily, brushing away Sacha’s arm.  “Sacha, this is my boyfriend, Louis.”  
  
Sacha glared at Louis.  “We’ve met,” he ground out.  Skinny kid with a mop of sandy hair and features reminiscent of a baby hedgehog?  Yeah, they’d met, all right.  Once Sacha had tried to feel up Louis in the elevator of the physics building, and Louis had hit him with a clipboard.  Sacha had suffered a black eye and a bruised cheek, and couldn’t get any of his usual hookups to have sex with him for a week.  It had been _terrible_.  
  
Louis’ disgusting, cute grin faltered, but he blushed when Aleks kissed his cheek.  “Um, ready to go?  The movie starts soon.”  
  
Aleks smiled briefly at Sacha.  “I had fun tonight.  See you around campus.  Oh, Louis, there’s so much to tell you,” he said, turning back to Louis eagerly.  “Sacha and I had _such_ a steamy encounter in the restroom.  His cock curves up a little and...”  
  
Dumbstruck, Sacha watched Aleks walk hand-in-hand with Louis to the exit, all the while regaling him with the “steamy encounter.”  Louis giggled, blushed brighter, and listened raptly.  
  
Sacha looked around for someone to punch.  
  
\--  
  
Ten minutes later, Ivan found him nursing a bloody nose in the restroom.  Oh, that restroom!  Sacha’s hopes had been raised high (so to speak) in there twice that evening, but it had all been for nothing.  
  
“Hey, Sacha, you didn’t tell me that blond guy sucked you off,” Ivan complained.  
  
“How the fuck else do you think I knew about his lack of gag reflex?”  Sacha grumbled.  
  
“I assumed someone else told you!”  Ivan threw up his hands in despair.  “I found him, we danced, then I said that you said he had no gag reflex, and then he stomped on my foot and ditched me!”  
  
“Why the fuck would you say that anyway?  Damn it, Ivan, you’re so fucking _awkward_.”  
  
“I don't know, I thought it would be sexy...”  
  
“This is why you’re always alone,” Sacha chided him, sneering.  The sneer was not as effective as usual, though, as Sacha had stuffed toilet paper up both nostrils.  
  
Ivan scowled and gestured to the deserted stalls meaningfully.  “Well, where’s _your_ trust fund with the nice ass?”  
  
Sacha scowled more fiercely than Ivan.  “We fucked, but he has a boyfriend and they left for a date.”  
  
They glowered at each other until Ivan gave up and relaxed his eyebrows.  “Well, we’re both alone.  If you’re not busy, you wanna...?”  
  
“I’m out of here,” Sacha said quickly, flapping a dismissive hand at Ivan, and he went to find James and Simon.  Sometimes they were up for a threesome.  
  
The end.


	8. Pet Counseling

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I...just...needed to write cat fluff.

The war was over.  At the official Alliance celebration (soaked with Alliance-funded booze), Cain and Abel drunkenly agreed to live together on Mars.  Less than a month into their cohabitation, though, there was a serious, fuzzy obstacle to surmount...  
  
Abel pushed a chair against the kitchen counter and stood on it to grab the cake pan from the top cabinet.  He didn’t know how to bake, and neither did Cain, but their stacks of mail on the table were getting messy.  He put the cake pan on the table, put the mail in the cake pan, and admired his clean table and problem-solving skills.    
  
He went to drag the chair back to the table, but discovered that it was occupied.  Cain’s cat made minor adjustments to her sleek, white coat, settled more comfortably on the chair, and shot a glare of unadulterated loathing at Abel.  
  
He stepped forward hesitantly.  “Um, hey, Marya...”  
  
She tapped her tail against the chair.  
  
“Want to move so I can put the chair back, kitty...?”  He grasped the back of the chair, and she spat at him.  He jumped back with a yelp and crashed into the refrigerator.  Magnets scattered on the floor.  
  
Cain strolled into the kitchen.  “Baby, leave the fridge where it is.”  He scooped up Marya and settled into the chair.  
  
“I wasn’t trying to move it. Your cat hates me!”  Abel complained.  He picked alphabet magnets out of his hair and stuck them back on the refrigerator door.  
  
Cain stroked Marya’s back.  “Whatever.  Deal with it, sweetheart, not everyone is going to like you.”  
  
“Yeah, but I have to live with her, too.  Can’t you do something?”  
  
Cain snorted, and even Marya managed to look unimpressed.  “Like what?”  
  
“Maybe she could be an outdoor cat,” Abel suggested.  He flinched at Cain’s sudden scowl.  
  
“Outdoor?  My Printsessa Marya, an outdoor cat, like some common alleycat?” Cain said angrily.  “She’s a purebred Turkish Angora--”  
  
“Yeah, you’ve told me a hundred times,” Abel interrupted, crossing his arms.  
  
“So, what, you just want to throw her out there into the cold night so she can get bitten by ticks and fuck knows what else?” Cain bit out.  Marya stuck her head under his hand, and Cain started petting her again, but agitatedly.  
  
Abel let out a frustrated sigh.  “No, of course not--she doesn’t need to go out at night, but maybe during the day.  She could play in the hedge.  I bet she’d like that.”  
  
But Cain looked even more pissed, getting to his feet and clutching Marya to his chest.  “Yeah, she can just ‘play in the hedge' and get her silken coat horribly tangled and bits of dirt between her little toes.”  
  
Marya sent a cold glare in Abel’s direction and tucked her clean feet under her thick coat.  
  
“But she doesn’t like me,” Abel protested, trying and failing not to sound upset and petulant.  “You pay so much attention to her, and she doesn’t even want to let me pet her.”  
  
“So what?  Go pet your alligator,” Cain sneered.  
  
“My iguana?” Abel said after a moment.  
  
“Fuck, you got one of them too?  What’s next, a fucking boa constrictor?”  
  
“What?  No, I just have an iguana!  I don’t have a--what the hell are you talking about, an alligator?”  Abel demanded.  
  
“Newton, your fucking feral alligator, that’s what I’m talking about.”  Cain set Marya on top of her scratching-post castle and stalked towards Abel.  “Newton, your fucking Earth alligator who tried to _kill_ my gentle, colony-born cat!”  
  
Abel balled his fists.  “Newton is an iguana!  You don’t even know what alligators are, do you?!”  
  
“Well, pardon me for being born in a colony so fucking impoverished the zoo couldn’t afford taxidermy, let alone live animals!” Cain spat.  “Your _iguana_ hissed at Marya and she’s been out of her wits for days now!”  
  
Abel looked at Marya over Cain’s shoulder.  She licked her paw and then stared out the window.  “Out of her wits?  Cain, she’s not even doing--”  
  
“ _Out of her wits_.  But I bet you’re happy about that because you hate her so much, you selfish shit!”  
  
“ _Me?_ I’m selfish?!” Abel shouted.  Marya whipped her head around to stare at them, her feline face approximating either alarm or disgust.  “What about _you?_  You’re the one who spent over half of your Alliance savings on a fucking _cat-sitter!_ ”  
  
“What was I supposed to do, take the cat with me to war?!”  
  
“You said you were saving up for our honeymoon!”  
  
“We’re not even married!”  
  
“You promised!”  
  
“I was drunk--besides, _you’re_ the one with the fucking trust fund!”  
  
“And _you’re_ the one with the cat who eats better than we do!”  
  
“She has a delicate constitution!”  
  
“She’s fucking spoiled!”  
  
“Well, too fucking bad, because she’s not going anywhere!”  
  
Abel breathed hard through his nose.  “Cain,” he said, “we’re going to counseling, or Newton and I are leaving.”  
  
Cain jaw cracked audibly as he ground his teeth.  “Fine,” he snarled.  “But Marya’s coming along too.”  
  
Marya looked about as happy about the suggestion as Abel did.  
  
\--  
  
And then they went to counseling and figured out their problems and lived happily ever after until Newton got them sick with salmonella at their commitment ceremony and they spent the honeymoon in the hospital.  The end.


	9. Pet Counseling, Part 2

“This is Marya,” Cain said proudly. “She’s a purebred Turkish Angora, named for the fearless warrior princess Marya Morevna. As a kitten she placed first for poise and cuteness in the 134th annual Colony Five Cat Show. And I’m Sacha,” he added belatedly.

“I’m Ethan, and I have, uh, a beautiful iguana named Newton IV, who is my fourth iguana in a long line of Newtons, and he’s named after Sir Isaac Newton, who was a brilliant scientist and actually a real person and not a fairy tale character,” Abel said snottily.

Cain and Marya hissed at him.

“And what are your goals for these sessions?” the counselor asked, watching Marya shed white fur all over the dark carpet.

“We want to be a stronger, more committed couple and not spend all our time arguing about Sacha’s cat,” Abel recited.

“It would also be great if you could refer us to a cat counselor, because I think Marya would do really well in another cat show,” Cain added. “But she needs coaching and encouragement.” He pointedly didn’t look at Abel. “She doesn’t get enough encouragement at home because her parents fight a lot.”

“Since when am I her parent?!” Abel exploded. “She won’t even let me pet her!”

“Maybe if you didn’t smell like iguana—”

“I do not smell like iguana—”


	10. Pet Counseling, Part 3

This was a really good idea.  The counseling sessions with Cain (and his cat Marya, and even Newton came along sometimes) had revealed to Abel that Marya was an important part of Cain’s life, and that Abel had to love Cain and Marya both.  He would put forth genuine effort to make Marya like him and be a good “parent” to Marya, for Cain’s sake. 

So Abel asked the internet what to do, and the search engine consensus was that liver and catnip were the surest ways to a cat’s heart. 

Abel wasn’t sure how to get liver without slaughtering a chicken, and then he wasn’t sure where to find a chicken or how to slaughter it or what to do with all the feathers.  He defaulted to the catnip, and purchased a felt toy in the shape of a mouse that, the pet store clerk assured him, was filled with Extra Potent Grade A catnip. Abel had had to show his ID to buy the catnip, so he was certain Marya would like it. 

“Marya,” Abel sang, just like Cain sang to get her attention.  Cain was out for his morning jog, so Abel searched their little apartment alone, singing Marya’s name repeatedly until he caught sight of a dainty white paw sticking out from under their chest of drawers in the bedroom. 

“Hi, Marya,” he whispered, crouching to look under the dresser at her.  She glared at him and reeled in her stray paw, tucking it beneath her coat. 

“Look what I bought for you, Princess Marya.”  He dangled the felt mouse by its tail.  “Catnip mouse.  Isn’t it cute?  Isn’t it yummy?  Want to play with it?” 

Marya watched him unblinking.  He flicked the mouse to her, and she reflexively swatted it, sinking her claws into the unlucky toy.  Abel grinned in delight as she sniffed the mouse and began to play with it, batting it around, kneading her claws, chewing on it. 

“Do you like it, Marya?  Isn’t it fun?”  Abel giggled.  Marya ignored him, preoccupied with ripping the toy open.  She started drooling, slobbering all over the mouse and making wet breathing sounds around the mouse head stuffed in her mouth. 

“Okay, then,” Abel said, backing off.  “You, uh, you enjoy that.” 

She watched him leave with dizzy, dilated eyes. 

\-- 

“ _Nooo!_ ” 

Cain’s anguished howl startled Abel from the newspaper the next morning.  Alarmed, Abel looked up to see Cain stagger into the kitchen and dramatically collapse into a chair, flinging his cellphone at the refrigerator.  “What’s wrong?” he asked as Cain buried his head in his crossed arms. 

“I got a call, and M-Marya—I got her tested yesterday afternoon, and—Marya failed the drug test for the cat show,” Cain stammered, breath hitching. 

Abel stared at him in disbelief.  “They test the cats for drugs?” 

“ _Of course_ , Abel, this isn’t some fucking rip-off alley cat show, this is the real thing!” Cain snapped.  “They detected traces of _catnip_ in her urine!  Oh, Marya, how could you do this to our family!?  Didn’t I teach you to stay away from those bad kitties who waste their lives getting high?”  Cain broke off, sobbing into his arms. 

“Um, wow,” Abel said after a moment.  “W-wow, I wonder where she got the catnip.  Goodness.  I’m shocked.” 

Marya strolled into the kitchen, drool-covered catnip mouse dangling from her mouth, her pupils blown.  She circled Abel’s legs and began rubbing her face against his feet.  He reached down to grab away the mouse, but it was so drenched in cat-drool he couldn’t bring himself to hold it.  Marya nudged his hand with her head until he scratched her behind the ears.  She purred loudly.

“There’s always next year,” Abel reminded Cain. 

“I don’t know if I’ll ever recover from this shame,” Cain moaned. 

“Well,” Abel said slowly.  “Have you thought about, you know, bribing the drug testers?”  Abel may have been new to the Colonies, but already he knew how things were done. 

Cain glanced up, eyes bloodshot and red-rimmed.  “Abel,” he breathed.  “That’s a fantastic idea.” 

Abel smiled, then grimaced as Marya lay down on his feet with her soggy mouse.


	11. Bookclub

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Inspired by Encke's fondness for long novels and Cain having read "Anna Karenina" in asocialconstruct's "Before" and "Someone Else's Problems."

“ _Anna Karenina_.  You read this?” Eight asked in surprise, but before Fifty (really Forty, but whatever) could reply hurried on, “Man, I love Tolstoy, just picked up _War and Peace_ before I shipped out.”  
  
“Oh, cool, can I borrow it when you finish?”  
  
“Yeah, I’ve only got like seven hundred pages left.”  
  
“That’ll give me enough time to finish _The Vicomte of Bragelonne_ and _One Hundred Years of Solitude_.”  Fifty nonchalantly scraped some dried blood from his fingernails.  
  
Eight was suitably impressed.  “Whoa, what if we started a book club?” he said excitedly.  
  
“Yeah, only books over five hundred pages!”  
  
“Haha, yeah!”  
  
\--  
  
They started the bookclub and wrote a set of rules--nay, guiding principles--to make sure everyone toed the line, because this wasn’t a club for wimps.  
  
 _1\. Do not talk about the bookclub (except for promotional purposes)._  
  
 _2\. Only books of 500 pages or more allowed._  
  
 _3\. Rulebreakers will get a broken nose._  
  
“This is a great club,” Fifty said, surveying the small poster which they had decided to post in a supply closet.  “I can’t wait to break some noses and read insightful literature from many different cultures.”  
  
“You and me both, baby.”  
  
\--  
  
It went well until it didn’t.

The Five Hundred Pages or More Bookclub, Not for Wimps, met in its usual dingy supply closet, its members weakly illuminated by a flickering, bare light bulb.  Their task: to choose the next month's book and break any noses necessary.Several members offered suggestions, to their peril.  
  
“This isn’t five hundred pages!” Fifty said triumphantly, and Thirty cracked his knuckles.  
  
Forty-Two covered his nose and trembled.  “But _Things Fall Apart_ is a seminal work of Nigerian literature--”  
  
“Take it to the ‘under five hundred pages’ bookclub!” Fifty taunted.  
  
“Give it here!” Eight barked, yanking the book from Fifty to hold it under the light bulb.  The extra light wasn’t necessary.  “What’re you going on about, Fifty, this is way more than five hundred pages.”  
  
“That’s just because it’s large print! Look at that fucking typeface, it’s like twenty-six points or something!” Fifty snarled, and Thirty obligingly cracked his knuckles again.  
  
Eight thought about it for a moment.  “Rule stands as written,” he declared.  “Five hundred pages.  This counts.”  
  
“What?!  You’re setting a dangerous precedent, Eight, you’ll see,” Fifty warned.  “Next thing, they’ll be bringing in five hundred-page versions of--of _The Old Man and the Sea_ or _The_ fucking _Metamorphosis_!”  
  
Eight scoffed.  “Font would have to be size seventy-two for that to work.  Quit being such a fucking alarmist and read the book.”  He threw _Things Fall Apart_ back to Fifty, but missed, and Thirty had to spend the evening in medical while they stitched up his cheek and put a splint on his broken nose.  
  
The end.


	12. Bench Press

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Keeler and Encke try out a terrible idea and it ends terribly. Keeler's fiancee is supportive.

The morning meeting with the commanders ran late, so training ran late, so Keeler and Encke’s sim training ran late.  By the time they got to the gymnasium, it was packed.  There was only one bench free, but when a pair of navigators offered to vacate theirs, Keeler shook his head.  “We’ll take turns.  Continue,” he decided.  Phobos and Porthos went back to lounging on the bench and making snide comments about Abel’s hair.

Encke wandered through the weight racks, collecting about thirty pounds in five-pound weights.  “I am never setting foot in here at this time of day,” he grumbled, adding the weights to the barbell with a scowl.

“This is useless,” Keeler complained.

“Look at that jerk hogging like two hundred pounds over there,” Encke muttered.  “Do I have time to return later?”

“We have a staff meeting with the assistants,” Keeler reminded him.

They looked at the thirty pounds.  “How much do you weigh?” Encke asked.

Keeler gave him a skeptical look.  “About one-fifty.  I am not sitting on that barbell.”

“Come on, you can bench press me after!”

“This is a really bad idea.”

But Keeler ended up perched (perilously) on barbell, facing away from Encke.  “Don’t drop me,” he pleaded.

“I can press close to four hundred.  This is nothing,” Encke scoffed, gripping the bar and lifting it from its rest.

Keeler toppled back onto Encke’s face as Encke pushed up.  A nasty cracking noise startled even Phobos and Porthos from their snark-fest, who looked over their shoulders to see Encke shove Keeler to the floor.  “FUCK,” Encke shouted, blood pouring from his nose.  “Keeler, you broke by dose!”

“Oww,” Keeler groaned from where he had landed on the barbell and weights.  “I told you so!” he snapped.  “Now you’ve gotten blood and mucus on my butt!”

“Your butt broke by dose!”

“Ugh.  There’s so much _drama_ in this gym,” Phobos said disdainfully.  “Let’s go somewhere not infested with losers, Porthos.”

Porthos and his hip mohawk agreed, and they absconded.

\--

Keeler wasn’t badly hurt, but his face had several bruises from the weights.  By that evening, his face was mottled with discoloration.  And try as he might to cover the bruises with foundation borrowed from Puck, his fiancée noticed in their weekly videochat.

“Oh, no, what happened to you?  Ooh, that looks painful!”  Lakshmi made a little noise of sympathy, squinting at him through the video feed.  She was a physicist on Space Station Four, not far from the _Sleipnir_ ’s current coordinates, so the video had only a brief lag.

“I sort of had an encounter with Encke,” Keeler said evasively, trying not to frown because frowning hurt a little bit.

“OH!  An erotic encounter?”  she asked eagerly.  “Did his hand brush against your cute ass?  Did you accidentally touch his package in sim training?  Is it as big as it looks in all the pictures?”

“More like I accidentally hit his face with my, um, spine,” Keeler said, because spine sounded better than rear end (or tailbone).  “I think I broke his nose.  Or sprained it.  Can noses be sprained?  It sure looks pretty bad.  There was a lot of blood.  All over my, uh, spine too.”

Lakshmi made a face, but now she looked a bit skeptical.  “I don't know, bonbon.  Your, um, spine broke his nose?  That’s terrible…how did it happen?  Were you giving him a lap dance?”

“Something like that,” Keeler hedged.

“How gay is he?  Would he be up for a threesome when you dock at the station for maintenance?”

“He's got a boyfriend...”

Encke entered their room at that moment.  Waving to Lakshmi on the screen, he ducked into the bathroom to inspect his heavily bandaged face in the mirror.

“Hi, Encke!” she called cheerily.  “Eric, find out if he wants to bring his boyfriend along.  The more, the merrier.”

“Can I just say now that I don’t want to be underneath everyone because I’m scrawny and at a high risk of being squished,” Keeler said quickly.

“Oh, you are _not_ scrawny, quit whining—”

“It would be best if I just sort of perched on top of everybody and—”

“Yeah, like that worked well today,” Encke muttered with a snort, reentering the room, and then he touched his injured nose and blinked tears from his eyes, wishing he hadn't snorted.

Keeler turned to glare at him.   _Don’t tell her what happened.  It’s embarrassing!_  he mouthed.

“Encke, there you are!  I heard about your nose, poor thing!  Don't worry, I told Keeler he needs to be more careful with the lap dances.  I'll have him practice when he gets back.  I have a helmet I can wear to protect myself.”

Encke shrugged.  This story was marginally better than getting his nose broken by Keeler’s bony ass.   “Thanks, I appreciate it,” he said.

“You want a threesome or foursome with Keeler and me when you get to the station?”

“Maybe.  My boyfriend is really, really uninterested in ladies, though.”  Encke grabbed his pillow and started towards the door again.  “See you later.”

Keeler nodded.  “Tell Abel I need him in the lab a few minutes early tomorrow, would you?”

“Sure.”

“Bye, Encke!   Eric, don't break his nose again.”

The end what was this?

 


	13. Shore Leave

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Shore leave is an opportunity for relaxation and recreation.
> 
> Warnings: silliness, Abel and Deimos are cute and sexy until Cain shows up, Keeler abuses his position of power.

“Mmm,” Abel moaned, popping another chocolate into his mouth and chewing slowly.  “Raspberry and dark chocolate ganache.  This one’s my favorite so far.”

“Which?” asked Deimos. rolling onto his stomach and propping a pillow under his upper body.

“The one with the pink stuff drizzled on top.”  Abel plucked another from the box and held it to Deimos’ mouth, smiling sweetly.  “Here.”

“Mmm.”  Deimos ate the chocolate from Abel’s fingers, kissing him.  “It’s delicious.”

Abel licked at the chocolate smeared on his fingertips, shutting his eyes as he savored the flavor of the treat.  “This is the best shore leave ever.”

They lounged on the floor of their spacious hotel room, with floor-to-ceiling tinted glass in two adjacent walls overlooking the lush countryside of Colony Twelve.  Later, after Cain returned from an errand, they planned to dress and enjoy the outdoors, maybe spend some time playing with the flocks of dodos, which were the colony's main attraction.

But for now, they were enjoying a lazy morning, eating fruit and chocolate on plush blankets among mounds of colorful pillows, a decadent picnic, and basking in the warmth of the sunlight that streamed through the tall windows.

“It’s melting a bit,” Abel said with a little giggle, picking another chocolate for Deimos.  His fingers were sticky with melted chocolate as Deimos ate it.

“Mm, hazelnut and honey,” Deimos sighed, leaning over to lick Abel’s fingers.

“Let me taste,” whispered Abel, and he coaxed Deimos forward into a slow kiss.  “Mmm, it’s so sweet.  Want a strawberry?”

They continued feeding each other and making out idly, getting chocolate all over their faces and hands and chests.  Then the room felt too warm for them to wear their pajama pants, so they shucked them, but weren’t any cooler pressed together side-by-side in the nude.  All in all, it really was the best shore leave ever.

...Until the door burst open, banging against the wall and slamming shut again.  Startled, Deimos accidentally shoved the blueberry he was about to feed Abel up Abel’s nose.  They watched Cain, in his underwear, running about and gathering his clothes frantically.

“Cain,” Abel mumbled, trying to work the blueberry out of his nostril.  “What are you doing?”

“Princess, we gotta get out of here.  Both of you, get dressed!” Cain threw an armful of clothes at them and started stuffing his feet into his boots, his eyes wild.

Deimos shook a t-shirt and socks from his head and frowned.  Cain replied to his silent question, “I snuck into Porthos’ room and shaved off part of his ’hawk while he was asleep.  Fucking put on your clothes, we need to go!”

“No,” Abel said petulantly.  He sneezed out the rest of the blueberry.  “You shouldn’t have played a prank on him.  We’re not interrupting our breakfast for you.”

“That’s not a fucking breakfast, that’s dessert--c’mon, I’ll have to hide all day and it’ll be so boring if I’m all alone!” Cain pleaded.

Abel and Deimos exchanged a look, trying to decide whether they could wrest themselves from their comfortable nest and box of chocolates.  “I guess it could be fun to go watch the dodos,” Abel started, but he was interrupted by fists pounding on the hotel room door.

“Open up, you freaks!” they heard Porthos scream.  “You’re gonna wish you’d never been born when I’m finished with you!”

“Fuck!” hissed Cain, leaping across the room to open the corner window, a fire escape.  “Get dressed!” he urged Abel and Deimos again, who groaned and started to pull on their clothes.  "Figures he would blame all three of us," Abel griped.  "You're such a jerk, Cain."

The door shuddered as Porthos threw his body against it.  Deimos grabbed the chocolate and fruit and Abel stuffed a few pillows into his knapsack, muttering curses under his breath, before they followed Cain down the escape ladder.

\--

“This is the worst shore leave ever,” Abel complained later, as they sat on a rocky outcrop with their pillows, surrounded by dodos.  They had discovered, to their chagrin, that dodos in large numbers smelled strongly.  Moreover, Cain had eaten the rest of their so-called breakfast, and they were all hungry.

Cain eyed the large, flightless birds around them.  “I wonder if these guys taste okay,” he speculated for the fourth time, less in jest each time he said it.

“You’re not allowed to eat the dodos,” Abel snapped, shooing one away from his pillow.  Deimos, barely visible from his seat in the midst of ten friendly dodos, held his nose and petted one gingerly.

"I'm so fucking hungry..."

"You've never eaten meat in your life.  You don't even know how to cook it.  Besides, it's your fault we're stuck out here with nothing to eat--aaugh!"  A large dodo sat too close to Abel and pushed him off his pillow.  The dodo shifted its girth to the cushion with a satisfied cluck.

Cain tried to make a smaller dodo sit in his lap, but it squirmed away from him, flapping its stubby wings and honking irritably.  It went to join Deimos’ new friends, and Cain glared.  “How come they like _you_ so much, Myshonok?”

Deimos shrugged.  His stomach growled audibly, and the dodos around him cooed in response.

“Do you think Porthos has forgotten yet?” Abel wondered.

“Baby, wait ’til you see what I did to his hair.  No way he’ll forget it.  Gonna get Phobos tomorrow.”

“Ugh, no.  Maybe you could go apologize and offer to pay for a hair cut instead, so we can head back and get some lunch at the cafe,” Abel suggested optimistically, as he tried to rescue his pillow.  He hoped the hotel wouldn't charge a penalty fee because the pillow smelled like dodo.

Cain was opposed to this idea, but within an hour, hunger drove them back to the path to the hotel.  Part of the dodo flock accompanied them to the front doors, honking a farewell chorus as they stepped, cautiously, into the lobby.  Porthos was nowhere to be seen, so they wolfed down sandwiches at the hotel cafe and then took the service stairs to their room, hoping to remain unseen.  But Porthos and Phobos, aided by another friend, caught them emerging from the stairwell.

Hair flew.

\--

Encke and Keeler weren’t sure why so many flight teams returned to the _Sleipnir_ with closely cropped hair.  “I’ve never indicated that longer hair is inappropriate,” Keeler said, baffled.  “Obviously, right?”

“I told the men on the first day that anything goes.”  Encke shrugged.  He honestly gave no fucks about hairdos, so long as no one touched his signature style.  “Maybe it’s a new fad.  Remember when everyone grew handlebar mustaches before you put a stop to it?”  He had started to grow one himself because they looked so distinguished, but Cassius (with razor and shaving cream in hand) tipped him off that Keeler had some weird thing against the mustaches.  Encke figured it was because Puck had tried to dye his mustache pink and the cheap dye had burned his nose and lips.

But: “Oh, yes, I guess it’s probably another hipster thing,” Keeler decided.  “Well, we can’t have that.  We’re soldiers.  We have no time to spend appropriating authentic elements of various subcultures in order to create ironic inauthenticity.  I’ll send out another memo.”

“Pretty sure just having short hair isn’t a hipster thing,” Encke said after a moment, now wondering what Keeler had against hipster things.  Surely he had better things to worry about.  “Pretty sure that’s just a standard military hairstyle.”

“And they’ve appropriated it.  See you at sim training later.”

Keeler left Encke wondering how a group could appropriate part of itself ironically without imploding.

The end.


End file.
